Theater Fare Off Broadway and On
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
ON STAGE By Joseph ? Shipley Theater Fare Off Broadway and On Borak. By Robert D. Hock. Directed by Allen Fletcher. Presented by Richard Blofson, Gordon Davidson and Richard Jackson. At the...
...Episodes are baldly juxtaposed, in the pattern of sharp contrast popular since Eliot's The Waste Land and E. E. Cummings' him...
...even more gripping is the personal story of tangled alliances which then tore families apart...
...Music by Jule Styne...
...All the Way Home...
...Do Re Mi...
...Judith Palestrant, by using a lawsuit of a son ostracized by his father for sending the grandson to high school (against Amish beliefs), makes strong drama of the contrast between the conservative Amish pattern of living and the pressures of speeding American life...
...Presented by David Merrick...
...the hoy's brother is held as a Confederate spy...
...At the Alvin Theatre...
...Book by N. Richard Nash...
...The result is decidedly one of Brecht's minor mixtures of malaise, yet somehow Julian Beck's stage design weaves it together and gives solidity to a struggle against evil that has no roots, so no one can pluck it out...
...George Mathews, David Burns and George Givot, a glut of gangsters from Huby's early days, hinder while trying to help his scheming...
...From the book A Death in the Family, by James Agee...
...Directed by Arthur Penn...
...We come back to realism amid the Pennsylvania Amish in Shunned, another first play...
...At the Belasco Theatre...
...Brecht dodges by saying on the program that we should not wrack our brains over motives...
...Directed by Kanin...
...Presented by Concord Associates...
...Directed by Judith Malina...
...Borak gives a vivid picture of the ordinary soldier in the Civil War...
...Directed by Richard L. Tobin...
...At the Dickens Theatre...
...The many schemes of Huby Cram fall through, and in the play's last sentimental moments he is content to dance quietly with the wife who has patiently endured his get-rich-quick scrambling...
...Music by Cy Coleman...
...Father and son Borak (played effectively by William Swetland and Andrew Prine) are Union officers...
...He and Nancy Walker work well together, and lots of dough will flow to Do Re Mi...
...Wholly different is In the Jungle of Cities, Berthold Brecht's picture of perverse and distorted lives set in Chicago and growing out of the hatreds and greed in the backwash of a world war...
...James Theatre...
...The sinister Malayan who moves through the play like a diabolical trouble-rouser is unmotivated and unexplained...
...The family, with such sure performers as Aline MacMahon and Lillian Gish, comes to life as a believable background to the thoughtful story and shapes a strong and moving drama of regeneration...
...By Bertolt Brecht...
...Wildcat...
...Most of the songs are built around the story, but "Cry Like the Wind" should be a bountiful hit...
...Shunned...
...Her story is fortified by the natural homeyness of the surroundings...
...and the plaza scene, "Give a Little Whistle and I'll Be There," in which the wildcatters and the townsfolk join in dancing...
...By Judith Palestrant...
...The play itself bounces at a fast pace through a feeble story, with a hero who seems perpetually in a bad temper...
...Colleen Dewhurst, as the widow, makes a tense figure who gradually achieves tender and more understanding treatment of her son —and a more hopeful outlook...
...Phil Silvers has many comic moments—as when, after playing five of the rehearsal band's instruments, he turns to the audience and explains: "You hang around, you learn...
...There was a recent scramble of plays off Broadway designed to catch the holiday crowd, but not many have survived...
...Three which are still running seem to me worth a visit...
...Directed by Michael Kidd...
...Presented by and at the Living Theatre...
...In All the Way Home, a woman finds courage to face life after her husband's death...
...Presented by Kidd and Nash...
...Meanwhile, Broadway has battered the wintry season with two more musicals—both hits because of their stars...
...Presented by Fred Coe and Arthur Cantor...
...Translated by Gerhard Nellhaus...
...Mexican moods add color to the bordertown romance, but the show really gets into action only when Lucille makes it a Ball...
...At the St...
...Lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green...
...Lyrics by Carolyn Leigh...
...Two episodes are high peaks of merriment: the "What Takes My Fancy" dance of Wildy (Miss Ball) and the ragged old prospector Sookie (Don Tomkins...
...Book by Garson Kanin...
...In the Jungle of Cities...
...With power and psychological depth unusual in a first effort, the play shows the battle of duty and love and the interplay of passions that makes every victory a loss—yet indicates that even death may mean a spiritual triumph...
...Lucille Ball has a romp in the oil-well story of Wildcat, with a fantastic drilling and onstage gusher as the finale...
...Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker bring laughs to Do Re Mi, the musical tale of a slick man who wants the quick way to the top, while his loving but somewhat frumpy wife wishes he'd settle back and be content in the middle...
...One early winter drama has quality I should like to stress...
...At the Martinique Theatre...
...By Tad Mosel...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 2
